German power metal generators, HELLOWEEN announce the re-issues of two of their classic albums to be released on April 19th: The legendary double-album “Keeper Of The Seven Keys: The Legacy” (2005), including the singles ‘Mrs. God’ and ‘Light The Universe’ feat. Candice Night, and the album “Gambling With The Devil” (2007) including the singles ‘As Long As I Fall’ and ‘Find My Freedom’.
The albums will be available in the following formats:
“Keeper Of The Seven Keys: The Legacy”:
2CD + 2LP
CD1:
01. The King For A 1000 Years
02. The Invisible Man
03. Born On Judgment Day
04. Pleasure Drone
05. Mrs. God
06. Silent Rain
CD2:
01. Occasion Avenue
02. Light The Universe
03. Do You Know What You’re Fighting For?
04. Come Alive
05. The Shade In The Shadow
06. Get It Up
07. My Life For One More Day
Bonus:
08. Run (The Name Of Your Enemy)
09. Revolution
“Gambling With The Devil”:
CD + 2LP
CD
01. Crack The Riddle
02. Kill It
03. The Saints
04. As Long As I Fall
05. Paint A New World
06. Final Fortune
07. The Bells Of The 7 Hells
08. Fallen To Pieces
09. I.M.E.
10. Can Do It
11. Dreambound
12. Heaven Tells No Lies
Bonus:
13. Find My Freedom
14. We Unite
15. See The Night
16. Never Surrender
Finnish super group FLAT EARTH, featuring former HIM members Mikko “Linde” Lindström (guitar) and Mika “Gas Lipstick” Karppinen (drums) alongside ex-AMORPHIS bassist Niclas Etelävuori and POLANSKI singer Anttoni “Anthony” Pikkarainen, has recently posted a new lyric video for ‘Subhuman’ track, taken from their “None For One” album. The video is created by Mohsen “Stargazer” Fayazi at Stargazer MultiMedia.
FLAT EARTH was formed after Etelavuori fell out with the manager of AMORPHIS and exited the latter band. Suddenly, Niclas was left stranded. He decided to show the world that he still had a lot to give, so he started looking for possible bandmates.
Niclas explains: “After over two decades playing with bands, I was at a point thinking that maybe I start doing something else. But then I knew I had these songs on my hard drive still, and nothing was done with them. And I just wanted to get rid of them and see what happens. But then it kind of took over and I started to focus more on that.”
Linde first sprang to mind, even though he still had his hands full with HIM at that time. Nevertheless, the two of them kept meeting regularly, and started working on ideas for new songs. Getting Anthony on board provided additional inspiration. And when their old bandmate Karppinen finally joined on drums, the group’s lineup was completed.
While Linde was busy playing the States and Europe on HIM‘s farewell tour, the remaining trio spent their time recording drums to seven pilot demos that had previously been taped in Niclas‘s basement studio. Gas brought along two of his own songs, and Anthony composed a new track for the band. Linde found an old song of his he had first fleshed out when he was only 13. The rest of the tracks were Niclas‘s ideas mainly, treated to the band’s arrangements, with Anthony providing both the vocal melodies, as well as the lyrics. The basic structure for the first album was ready.
Linde remembers: “Our common friend, who’s been helping us get this band off the ground, recommended a guy named Anttoni ‘Anthony’ Pikkarainen, who had been singing in a band named POLANSKI. The band had made a record, and after we’d listened to it, we had to set up a meeting immediately.
“I have a great feeling about our new band. Anthony had recorded with Hiili Hiilesmaa before, and the rest of us have known each other for years. It feels as if all the stars have finally aligned.”
On May 17 2018, the band posted an official studio video for ‘Blame’ song which can be seen below:
A shocking piece of news hits the metal universe today; ACCEPT‘s founding member, Peter Baltes has recently revealed that he has quit the band! He posted the following statement:
“To all ACCEPT fans: I hereby like to announce my departure as bass player from ACCEPT. I have been with the band from the very beginning. Many of you have been there as well. I like to thank you all for the great years we shared together. Keep it metal.”
His old friend and another founding member of the band, Wolf Hoffmann has also posted his statement on his official Facebook page:
“We spent four decades together and went through thick and thin, ups and downs and I remember some incredible moments on stage. There was a blind understanding between us, personally and musically, that is very rare in this business!
Looking back, I will forever cherish the carefree early years, the countless hours we spent writing songs, goofing around or roaming the cities together on tour – just having a good ol’time!
Especially these last 10 years, after the revival of ACCEPT being so much fun and so successful that I thought we would continue forever and sail into the proverbial sunset together – maybe until one of us would drop dead on stage. But I guess I was wrong, it wasn’t meant to be.
To see Peter leave ACCEPT now saddens me immensely but there’s nothing I can do but to wish him well – hoping that this is the right decision for him and that he will find whatever he is looking for …
I will certainly miss my musical brother! One thing is certain, however : ACCEPT will continue full steam ahead !! Wolf”
“And there are days that you start them with some shocking and sad news… ” Chief Editor of Metal Shock Finland, Mohsen “Stargazer” Fayazi stated, “But I know Wolf Hoffmann and his passion for Metal. He’ll do it full steam ahead! Wishing him, Peter, all other band members and of course Gaby, the best of luck and success!”
The band has recently released a live album, “Symphonic Terror – Live At Wacken 2017” on November 23rd, 2018 via Nuclear Blast. This album is a unique one, features a unique ACCEPT show, shot on August 3, 2017 at the Heavy Metal Mecca,Wacken Open Air 2017, where the band played the biggest and most extraordinary show of its career in front of 80,000, on top of thousands more fans watching via a live stream.
German rock song writer and musician, Steve Brockmann has recently announced a new metal music project, VISION OF CHOICE. Now he has revealed the singer for this project who is Lukas Remus (EPILIRIUM).
Steve commented: “I am happy to announce that I’ve finally found the singer for my upcoming metal project Vision of Choice – he is the vocalist from Epilirium, Lukas Remus!
I saw Lukas perform with his band at the Grailknight’s Grailfest in Hanover, and loved his variable voice and tone, and I was stoked thinking that it would be cool to have a singer like him for the album. After the concert, I talked with him about the project and later sent him my songs, and he was on board immediately. The first tracks already sound great – I can’t wait to hear the whole album with his vocals!”
Lukas states as follows: “Steve told me how much he liked our gig and then we talked about his new metal project, and how he was looking for a singer.After hearing the songs, I was convinced instantly – they are extremely cool, have great melodies, and they rock hard. And we are fortunate that Epilirium’s producer, Robert, was keen to record my vocals. Folks, stay tuned, this will be very good!”
Steve Brockmann released three instrumental solo albums and a rock opera one.
It’s always a pleasure to sit and have a chat with a metal friend, especially having had a chance to work with them. Niclas Etelävuori, an amazing bass player who has been in the heart of the rhythmic part of AMORPHIS music for seventeen years, is now busy with his new band FLAT EARTH. To know more about his past and present, I had an interview with Niclas from which an excerpt can be read below:
Perhaps you agree with me that mankind is a creature of habit and seventeen years is long enough to make it difficult for any person to change or want to try new things. So I asked Niclas how he feels about those years with AMORPHIS now?
– “It was great times, it was a huge part of my life. I mean I don’t know, sometimes you just have to move on. But I have good memories and bad memories, but mostly good memories.”
In April 2017, Niclas announced his departure from AMORPHIS via a post on Facebook, where he mentioned his decision as “the hardest decision he ever made”. I asked him about it and what exactly happened during that time which led him to make that decision;
– “It wasn’t a sudden decision, it’s been growing for many years probably, five or six years but then I don’t know. I felt like things were getting just worse and people didn’t stay to their words and you know, a lot of things didn’t match. So I don’t know, I’d just had enough. We had an agreement that we do changes but it never happened. So I thought ‘this will never happen, I have to do something else’. That’s basically it in a nutshell. But it’s very complicated and a long story, it would take a week to tell it. There’s some personalities, their egos go before other things.”
FLAT EARTH, why and how was it formed? Niclas responded:
– “After a couple of weeks sitting outside drinking beer, I had to do something. Then I had this one song and my Spanish friend Juan came by and ‘yeah yeah I wanna sing on that one’, so we released this one song in Spanish with him. But I knew I had a lot of songs on my hard drive and some of them were pretty old, so I didn’t even remember what I had done. So it took weeks to listen to all of that. Then later, I started to look for somebody to play with and then Linde came up through a common friend. I liked his style always and I knew that maybe he wasn’t going to do anything after HIM finished. So then I asked him over and he was right away into it. From there on we start to look for a singer and then I have forced almost Gas to be in the band, but now he’s really into it (laughs). But Gas and I go back, we knew each other almost thirty years now. It’s all good.”
If you know AMORPHIS and if you’ve checked the FLAT EARTH single, ‘Blame’, you will also have noticed the difference in the music. So let’s see what Niclas thinks about it:
– “I feel good about it. Actually now we can do whatever we want. So it would be pointless for me to play the same music that Amorphis is doing. This is our first album and there’s a lot of different music on it already. I’m very excited when we get to play more and compose the second one.”
I was curious about the band’s name, you might be too. So I asked Niclas and he answered:
– “It was kinda from many coincidences. We had a day planned to set the name for the band at Linde’s house and it was kind of our first get together. And we were to come up with a name and we cooked food and had drinks and stuff. Linde has four hairless cats and one of them passed on as soon as we got the dinner, from a heart attack. In the end we couldn’t come up with a name that day. The next morning, we thought we have to come up with something and we had a couple of names and Flat Earth came up. Then we somehow felt that we had to give tribute to the cat, because he lost his life when we were coming up with the name. Then we also heard a story that if the earth is flat, then all the cats would shove everything off it, so we had a lot of coincidences.”
You can listen to the whole of this interview on the SoundPlayer below:
He is an amazing bass player who has always dedicated his skills and talent for the benefit of the band. There is no doubt about his role in making the legendary ACCEPT successful. Peter Baltes was born on 4 April 1958 in Solingen, Germany. He started his music career when he was young and although he claims that he is not Billy Sheehan he was voted as the number one bass player in Burrn Magazine reader’s poll of 1985.
ACCEPT are heading towards the end of ‘The Rise of Chaos’ European tour and very soon they are going to bring their music to the land of metal, Finland. Peter shares his thoughts on playing there:
“Number one is the dedication of the fans, I mean Finland is a true, true metal country. It has true metal fans and it shows every time we play, we can feel this is like something special, this is something beyond you know. It’s just, you can feel it on stage and when you talk to the fans and people.
And everybody seems to know metal – even people in the hotel, people on the street. Metal is like a high standard in Finland, which is great.”
Whenever they were active, ACCEPT have always been on a high. Great quality of music and production on their albums, along with energetic and perfect performances on stage have always been true facts about them. But what makes ACCEPT work so well?
“I think there’s a couple of factors. One of them is the songwriting part, Wolf and I have been writing these songs for so many years and we have our little quirky ways how we do it, but what comes out in the end is somehow what defines Accept, from the songwriting part.
Also, our dedication to our craft and our work ethic – we really do strive for excellence. When we play on stage we want things perfect. And at the same time trying to achieve the human aspect – that we have fun and play, that it’s not so organised. So that’s difficult for us to do, but for some reason we’re doing this very very well.”
Not many bass players dare to play a solo on stage, but Peter Baltes has done, which has always received positive feed back from the crowd.
“Well we used to do a few bass solos a couple of tours back. It’s not really about the spotlight, it’s a variety for the fans. If you’re in the audience and you see a show, in the old days there used to be a guitar solo and a drum solo. A bass solo was a little unique, but it was something cool we could offer. We decided now it would be much cooler to have some sort of battle going on instead of play a bass solo – have a little guitar bass battle with Wolf going on, which I win every night (laughs), I’m just kidding.
I’m no Billy Sheehan, I’m not very technical. But most things I play come right outta my stomach, my gut and I’m always concerned about the rhythm of things. I see the faces of the people when I play and that’s pretty cool. Most of all, it’s just I prefer playing within the band.”
Those fans who followed the band from the beginning know that Peter also did some lead vocals on tracks such as ‘Primitive’ and ‘The King” and a few more. But would it be possible that he do it again in the future?
“Probably could in the future, but never had the opportunity at this point because Mark has such a great range and has a really nice clean voice. Which back in the day was the reason I started singing a couple of ballads because we wrote some and you know, I guess almost the band pointed at me and said ‘you try it’ because they knew I was singing a little bit, ’cause back then it made sense, it was kinda cool.
We have Mark now and he’s such an excellent singer, but who knows in the future? Maybe we do something together, I’m not opposed to it, no.”
You can listen to the whole of this interview on the Audio Player below and if you would like to win a pair of tickets for the ACCEPT shows in Finland, Peter said a secret code, fill the form with that code and you’ll have a chance to be one of our lucky winners.
